Moondancer

Twilight and Moondancer heard the door to the dungeon exploding behind them, and the fear gave them a boost in speed. It didn’t last long, however, and Moondancer was flagging. Her lungs heaving for breath, she staggered to a walk, clutching her side in pain. Twilight noticed the light that her friend was carrying slow down, and quickly came to a halt.

They were in a corridor, and Entice could move fast when she wanted to. Running wasn’t going to work. Twilight grabbed Moondancer’s arm and dragged her to a side door on the corridor. The door wasn’t locked, and Twilight pulled Moondancer inside the room, not bothering to close the door behind her.

The room was bare, probably a storeroom once, but empty now. The ceiling was low, the floor was made of flagstones and the wall undecorated whitewash. That was all that Twilight took in with a quick glance.

“Stop the light! She’ll see it!” said Twilight between deep breaths. Moondancer nodded, breathing hard, and let the light dissipate.

The room went black, and there was no light of any kind.

Twilight and Moondancer pressed their backs to the cold, damp, wall, trying to control their gasping for air. Twilight was the first to recover. Her mind ran through all the different ways that they could be scried. The darkness would help with many, but they were still breathing, and their lifeforce would be strong.

She needed her magic to shield them, and she had no magic. She tried to cast a spell, but it fizzled. She tried again. Fizzle. Again. Fizzle. Fizzle. Fizzle.

Moondancer could see Twilight’s look of panic by the faint light of the failing magic. She took the wand from her hands, Twilight was too focussed on her failed casting to notice.

Kneeling, Moondancer touched the tip of the wand to the floor, willing a slow trickle of energy through it, keeping the thaumic flow as smooth as possible. Using the same trick Twilight had used earlier, Moondancer started scribing on the hard flagstones. She ran the wand in a large circle around her, keeping the wand as steady as she could despite the lubricant and other fluids covering the thing. To her ears, the noise from the spark etching into the stone was almost as loud as Twilight’s attempts at magic.

The first circle done, she started on another, even larger circle around the first. Moondancer was breathing quietly by the time the second circle was complete, and Twilight had calmed.

Moondancer started on the runes between the two circles, here was one that looked like an ‘E’, and then an ‘L’, it was painstaking work, but Moondancer was methodical and knew what she was doing.

Twilight quickly worked out Moondancer’s plan, and tried to help by blocking the faint light of the wand from the door with her body.

Twilight watched Moondancer’s face as she worked, illuminated by the reflected light from the wand. The air between the two circles shimmered the light, as though hot air was rising from it. Soon it felt almost solid, and soon after that, the circle was complete.

The only light in the room winked out. Blind, Twilight groped in front of her until she found Moondancer, who guided her into the circle. They sat, back to back, and talked.

“We can talk, if we keep it quiet,” whispered Moondancer, “Are you okay?”

“I’m okay. Thank you for rescuing me. How you could undo those buckles with your back to that pit… Moondancer, thank you! Thank you!”

“Heh, don’t sweat it, Twilight. I wasn’t going to leave you behind–”

“‘Don’t sweat it’?! Moondancer, you’re a heroine! You just calmly released me while a hell-beast was climbing out of a hole behind you! I couldn’t do that. You save my life, my soul–”

“Twilight, stop it. Please. I’m not a heroine. Really. You’re a heroine–”

“Moondancer,” said Twilight levelly, “I have never done anything heroic in my life, and I don’t plan on starting any time soon. I’ll leave the heroic acts of librarianship to someone else, thanks. But you–”

“Please just drop it, Twilight. It was nothing. To be honest, I don’t think Entice was going to hurt us, she just wanted to scare us a little. We probably don’t–”

“Moondancer! Entice is a succubus! A very, very, powerful succubus. Even if she doesn’t want our souls, she wants to suck our life-force dry!”

“She’s just lonely, Twilight. She just wants to play the only games she knows.”

“Moondancer, she’s a succubus! They don’t get lonely, they don’t want to play. They are deceivers nonpareil. The most seductive, persuasive, convincing, liars that hell can spawn! You can’t trust them. Ever! What were you thinking?”

“‘What was I thinking’? What were you thinking with that trick? You could have been killed! And you didn’t give me a hint what was going on. One moment I’m getting freaky with a shadow-vixen and the next the world moves. For everyone!”

“How did you think that her little game would end? We would both be her sex-slaves, willing to do anything, including giving up our lives, for just one more kiss. It was worth the risk. And–”

“And?”

Twilight took a deep breath.

“And I wasn’t sure that you hadn’t already been corrupted. I wasn’t sure if you were on her side.”

“What!” hissed Moondancer, before barely regaining her composure and lowering her voice, “What do you mean, ‘on her side’?”

“Moondancer, you had been alone with her for some time. You seemed besotted with her. You had had sex with her. If I didn’t know better, I thought you wanted me to have sex with her. What was I supposed to think?”

“I– Twilight, I’m not a fool. I know enough about succubi. She is clearly trapped here. If she could have escaped by any means, she would have done so by now. So what’s her best option? Her ideal outcome? Feeding on a couple of girls until there’s nothing left? No. She needs company, she needs people more than food. She needs to show a couple of girls a good time, so when we go back to Canterlot, we send more people for her to play with. Tartarus, she could charge for it!”

“Moondancer, that’s not her best outcome.”

“Oh? What is?”

“Her best outcome is to convert her new guests into slaves who’ll direct others to come to the ‘hidden city’ for sex. And she needs to convert those others into slaves. Slowly, so no-one becomes suspicious. And then she brings those slaves together, and uses them. The only way that she can escape is divine intervention. That means Princess Celestia. And she can chose two options: either release her slaves to the Princess in return for freedom, or else convince Princess Celestia that such an atrocity has been committed here that the Princess unleashes the power of the sun on this castle, finally breaking the seal and letting her escape back to Tartarus, with a belly full of souls.”

“oh”

Twilight sighed.

“I needed to get out of there, and I couldn’t fight my way out. She’s really, really, powerful, Moondancer. She wasn’t kidding about having near-godly power. Her only weakness was that she seemed to be a little out of it, the first time she fed from me. That wouldn’t have lasted, so it had to be then. I’m just glad my trick worked.”

And then, in a smaller voice, Twilight whispered, “I also didn’t know how long I could have resisted her…”

“Okay, so how did your trick work? Why didn’t she recognise a siege wand when she was given one?”

“Because wands were first created by your great-to-the-nth uncle’s teacher three hundred odd years ago. Long after Entice went to sleep. She didn’t know what a wand was.”

“Oh. Huh. Well, she knows now.”

“Yeah,” said Twilight, and then quieter, “I hope we didn’t hurt her.”

Moondancer pretended not to hear her, and was quiet for a moment.

Before Moondancer could think of something to say, there was a faint light coming through the doorway. A moving light.

Both girls watched with wide-eyed silence, not daring to breathe, as the light approached. Twilight pressed close to Moondancer, who was doing the same to Twilight. The magic circle they were in blocked most sound, but they may not have been able to hear anything over the hammering of their hearts.

The light got brighter, and stopped at the doorway. The light entered the room. It was being carried by a woman

It wasn’t Entice.

The woman was short, with a full body and a round face. She had a kindly smile, and her greying brown hair was tied up in a bun. She wore a plain white, full-length dress and practical-looking shoes. Pre-classical, or post-erisian, low status servant garb thought Twilight. The servant held a lantern in one hand, holding it high and shining the light around the room. The movements of her mouth clearly showed that she was speaking, but Twilight couldn’t hear a thing.

The woman’s gaze passed right through the women in the magic circle.

The woman’s mouth was moving, as though she was calling out, but the power of the circle prevented them from hearing what she was saying. The woman walked across the room. She looked at the wall that they had slumped against and the floor where they were sitting, but her grey eyes never focussed on the pair who sat frozen with fear, not daring to breathe.

The woman was closer now, and the circle let a faint echo of her words reach Twilight and Moondancer’s ears. She was speaking with Entice’s voice: “You can come out, Twilight, Moondancer. It’s okay. I’m not angry. No-one’s going to hurt you. You must be cold and hungry. Come upstairs, and I’ll make you something to eat in the kitchens. We can talk. Just talk. You can come out, Twilight, Moondancer. It’s okay…”

The woman was endlessly repeating the same words again and again.

Seemingly unable to detect Twilight and Moondancer, the serving woman walked around the perimeter of the room, and then left to continue her patrol. Twilight managed to breath again.

The light gone, the room was again as black as soot.

“Oh thank Celestia that ward worked,” whispered Twilight.

“You should thank my grandma instead. Afterall, she was the one that taught it to me. Wards like that were all the rage when she was a kid, apparently.”

Twilight managed a weak laugh, “There’s always more to learn, it seems.”

“That was scary. I think we’re safe now, but we can’t stay down here forever. What do we do?”

“Well,” said Twilight, collecting herself, “That must have been one of Entice’s animated shadows. She was controlling over thirty of those during her demonstration back in the dungeon. She’s using them to search the entire dungeon, and has probably posted ones like that at all the exits. Sneaking out will be hard. Can you teleport?”

“Nope.”

“‘Nope’ as in ‘I can manage a few feet, but I end up a little singed, or–”

“‘Nope’ as in ‘I can’t teleport’. The S-T matrix collapses before I can finish energising the first lattice array. Every time.”

“Oh. Um, it’s really not that hard. Maybe we can have a quick study session and see if you can get the hang of it?”

“Twilight,” sighed Moondancer, “You do realise that there are a total of three students at the University who can teleport, including you? And maybe one in ten members of the faculty? I do not think I can ‘get the hang of it’ after a quick study session.”

“See?” said an almost irate Twilight, “That’s the problem! You just need confidence, but you see everyone else failing and think ‘I can’t do that’ and give up! Don’t give up, just let yourself go, and it’ll be fine.”

“I need a plan, Twilight, not a cheerleader.”

“Okay, a plan. We’re lost, but Entice isn’t. She’ll have placed her shadows to guard the exits, and they’re going to be standing still and holding lights. She wants us to come out, after all. We wait to see if there are any regular patrols for the shadows, then sneak out, and look for the shadows that are guarding a spot. That’s where we’ll find the way out. We use the wand to get rid of them, run out the exit and escape the dungeons… Actually, how long will these energy drinks last?”

“No idea, they came from you. They seem pretty amazing so far. You’ll have to share your fixer with me.”

“They came from me? I didn’t recognise the master’s symbol on the bottles. I have no idea who brewed them.”

“Well, you were a little… distracted, when you gave them to me to carry. I had a theory, but I wasn’t going to ask.”

“What theory?”

“Well, you tell Princess Celestia everything, don’t you? And I mean, everything. Soooo, maybe you mentioned your plans for the weekend to her, and she gave you a little something something to help you make the most of the opportunity?”

“WHAT?!”

Moondancer clamped her hand around Twilight’s mouth, too late to silence the shout.

“Shhh.”

“Sorry. You surprised me. I– I don’t know where they came from. I’ll let you know when I remember. Anyway. We use the wand on the shadow guard and run past. We are then on a deadline: the sound of the wand will attract Entice’s attention. She will chase after us. I don’t know if this ward circle will hide us from her direct gaze, but she’s so powerful that I doubt it. What we will then need to do is head for the library–”

“The library again?”

“Yes, the library. We need to research demon binding rituals, anti-demonic wards, any way to seal her inside the dungeons, or at least ward the orchard against her. Once we do that, we can wait for Princess Celestia, as per our original plan. The library has lots of nooks, crannies and hiding places, and Entice will have to search the entire castle grounds in person to find us.”

“Okay, that actually sounds workable. Let’s do it.”

“Great! Now we need to spend some time waiting, to make sure that we know any patrol routes, so that gives us time to work on your S-T matrices. Yay!” Twilight quietly clapped her hands in excitement.

Moondancer groaned. She was trapped.

The conjured servant woman made three more rounds while Twilight tried to teach Moondancer how to teleport.

After an hour or so of focused study, mental exercises, encouragement and guidance, Moondancer still could not teleport. Twilight saw that Moondancer’s temper was getting dangerously short, and finally agreed that they could now try and escape.

“Okay, so, how do we sneak up on the shadow people without a light? I literally cannot see a thing.”

“Um, I do have a little magic. It might be just enough for a small spell. It’s one of the first I learned, when I was a child. Here goes.”

Twilight cupped her hands together and tried to coax a magic spark to life, hiding the light from the door. The spark fizzled out the first few times, but Twilight stuck with it. Eventually the spell formed properly. Not daring to breath in case it popped like a soap bubble, Twilight wafted the spell to Moondancer, who blinked with surprise when it struck. It took two more tries before Twilight was able to cast the same spell on herself.

Moondancer waved her hand in front of her face.

“Wow! I can see in the dark. This is such a cool spell! And you learned this as a child? Why–” Moondancer paused with sudden realisation, “Twilight, did you learn this spell so that you could read past your bedtime, under the covers?”

It really was an impressive spell: Moondancer could even make out Twilight’s blush.

Twilight crouched in the darkness, eyeing the door that she was sure lead back to the main body of the castle. It was closed, but it didn’t have a lock. To be fair, it didn’t really need a lock: it had a large demonic creature that looked like a cross between an star-nosed mole and frog guarding it. The demon held its scaled body alert, and a deep red glow lived in its widely-offset eyes. It was continuously scanning the three corridors that joined at the doorway. The creature’s forelegs were much shorter and less powerful than its hindlegs, the many long, dextrous, pale, tendrils coming from its face were clearly chosen by Entice to restrain its victims without hurting them.

Twilight had slowly crept as close to the beast as she dared. Any closer and the light over the door would be sure to fall on her. She was waiting for the right moment to make a run for it, but she was not at all sure what that moment would be. She couldn’t wait too much longer though: her feet were tired, despite the amazing energy drink, and if she waited too long then a patrolling shadow would come up behind her. It would be the rotund gentleman; he had a broad smile, and carried a lamp, and a sloshing hip-flask which he often sampled.

Moondancer was pressed against the wall behind Twilight. She touched Twilight’s shoulder in encouragement, nearly making Twilight scream in surprise. The little yelp she did give caused the beast to swing its head around and focus down the corridor they were in. It was a long, tense, moment before it continued to survey the corridors.

Twilight took that as a good time to move. She looked back to Moondancer and got a nod of readiness. Twilight shifted her grip on the wand and summoned her nerve. She judged the distance between them, and the range of the wand, one last time and then silently sprinted towards the creature, wand levelled at its chest. Moondancer waited.

The beast saw her coming, turned to face her and made ready to leap, tendrils already reaching out towards her. Twilight tried to activate the wand, pouring her internal power into it, through it, and towards the monster. Time seemed to slow as the monster leapt, far more powerfully than Twilight had anticipated. She could see it rushing towards her, crossing the distance between them with a single bound.

There was a faint spark of light at the tip of the wand.

She saw the many tendrils reaching for her. The wand was too slow. At the edge of panic, she poured more and more energy into it, willing it to fire faster, harder. A tendril wrapped itself around Twilight’s wrist.

The wand finally flared into life, a torrent of power surging from the tip. Moondancer’s family wand was centuries old, but it had been made by a master craftsman. The original siege wands were designed to allow mediocre casters breach stone walls. Twilight was not a mediocre caster, and the beast was far softer than stone. The blast cone tore through the body of the creature and kept on going.

Twilight gasped as the blast struck the ceiling over the doorway, dropping rubble on the corridor and destroying a significant portion of the stairway.

Twilight turned to look at Moondancer, still standing against the wall, staring wide-eyed at the destruction. Twilight’s blood froze when she saw a light behind Moondancer, moving fast toward them. Turning to the doorway, Twilight could see a pathway through the rubble to the stairs. Rocks were still falling, and the passage would not be usable for long. It was time to move.

Twilight ran towards the exit. Moondancer made to follow, but then stumbled.

“Cramp!” she cursed.

Twilight heard her and looked back, aghast. Moondancer was lying on the floor of the corridor, clutching her leg. The smiling, rotund gentleman was running down the corridor as fast as he could. His body was twisting and reshaping itself, with ghastly cracks playing across his face and clothes, revealing darkness within, slowing him down.

“Go!” shouted Moondancer, struggling to her feet, “GO!”

Twilight hesitated and then turned on her heel and ran.

To Moondancer.

The man was going to get to her first. He wasn’t looking much like a man anymore, his whole body bulging and twisting. Twilight wasn’t going to get there in time. She couldn’t use the wand: she might hit Moondancer.

She was only a few paces away when the man toppled and collapsed in on himself. A swarm of creepy-crawlies broke out of the shell of his skin. Spiders and centipedes and bats and rats and snakes. A wave of the small creatures washed over and past Moondancer, who shrieked in terror and surprise. They didn’t stop, washing past her. They seemed to swell and stretch as they went, getting larger and larger, far bigger than their normal counterparts would normally get.

Twilight reflexively pulled away from the swarm, falling backward to the ground, and pushing herself away from them with kicking legs. The creatures formed a barrier between Twilight and her friend, but went no further. Twilight stared past the horrific barrier and met Moondancer’s eyes.

“Go!” shouted Moondancer.

Twilight was frozen in place. The snakes were watching her, swaying as if to music only they could hear.

Entice’s voice sang out from the darkness all around them, “Oh, there you are. Don’t worry girls, I really don’t want to hurt you. Stay there, and I’ll be with you in just a minute. I’ll show you the baths, and fix you something to eat.”

Twilight scrambled to her feet, backing away from the snakes.

“Don’t worry Twilight, I’ll look after Moondancer for you.”

Twilight stopped.

“Go!” shouted Moondancer again, desperately shooing her friend away.

Twilight swallowed and tried to edge forward, doing her best to avoid the great snakes blocking her path. She wasn’t a fan of spiders or centipedes, but it was the snakes that made her mouth dry, her heart hammer, and her skin crawl.

The nearest snake slithered to block her route to Moondancer. Twilight whimpered.

Twilight closed her eyes and ran towards Moondancer, flailing her arms to try and ward off snake attacks. She tried ignore wet crunch when she stepped on something. She knew when she reached Moondancer when she stumbled over her and fell to the ground herself.

Helping each other up, they ran, Moondancer limping a little for the first few strides. The creepy crawlies didn’t chase after them.